


Two Dozen Deaths

by purple_bookcover



Category: Fire Emblem: Fuukasetsugetsu | Fire Emblem: Three Houses
Genre: Angst, Blood, Dark, Gen, Jeralt dies, Nonbinary My Unit | Byleth, Pain, why is my brain like this
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-01-30
Updated: 2020-01-30
Packaged: 2021-02-27 04:21:12
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 945
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22480945
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/purple_bookcover/pseuds/purple_bookcover
Summary: Byleth believes they can save Jeralt if they can just access Divine Pulse one more time.
Comments: 6
Kudos: 36





	Two Dozen Deaths

**Author's Note:**

> **M-rating for lots of blood and suffering.**
> 
> The other day I was playing this game and hit the cut scene where Jeralt dies and I thought, "Well, hold on, Divine Pulse has like twelve charges. What if..."
> 
> And this monster was born. 
> 
> Sorry.
> 
> (Implied NB Byleth because I want to.)

Jeralt turns. Smiles. 

Then the knife finds his back. 

The first time, I watch, stunned, frozen. My eyes go wide. My hands reach for nothing. My breath catches in my chest. 

Monica yanks out the knife. Jeralt collapses. And still I'm watching. 

Her smile curls like the blood dribbling out of my father as he convulses on the ground, horrible gurgles gasping from his throat as he dies. 

“You're just a pathetic old man.” 

I jolt. My body reacts more quickly than my mind. I dig and scrape for an unfamiliar power, a power I never asked for, a power foisted on me by forces I don't quite understand. In a burst, time reverses.

#

The second time, I don't watch as long.

I whip the Sword of the Creator toward Monica before her blade finds Jeralt and a surge of victory swells in my heart. 

But my attack never reaches its target.

A man appears, his magic absorbing the blow. His eyes are white, as white as his papery skin, as white as the sweep of hair melding into the fur of his cowl. 

“You must survive. Merely because there is still a role that I require you to fulfill.” His voice scratches. He sneers at the woman he's saved as though the sight of her repulses him. Yet he did save her. He did spare her from my blade. 

Jeralt dies again.

#

The third time, Thales looks bored as he blocks my blade. The fourth time, he laughs. The fifth time, he scowls, annoyed.

The sixth time, he catches the Sword of the Creator, tugging on it like a leash. 

“Do you really wish to continue doing this?” he says. 

I do not respond. 

“Let him go,” Thales says. “It is fate that he should die here.”

“No.” 

“You prolong your suffering.” 

I reach, again, scraping up the dregs of a power whose limits I've never tested, never even thought of testing. It hurts this time, pulls and drags like nails down my back. I grit my teeth and push time backward, backward, ever backward.

#

“Ten.”

I snarl as Thales blocks my magic. It is no more effective than the sword has been, but I cannot seem to lift my arms to swing anymore. 

“Ten tries. Each one a failure,” Thales says. “Yet you continue.”

I am hunched over, panting, little different from my father, who is sinking to his knees, trying to press his blood back into his body as his life escapes in spurts. 

“Fuck... you...” I say. 

Thales paces toward me, slow, unhurried. He takes my chin in his hand, lifts my face toward his, forces me to straighten. The motion sends stabs shooting through my body. The mere act of standing seems to shatter my body. 

“You have no idea what you are,” Thales says. “You fling this power about like an infant.” His shakes his head. 

I use the last of my energy to shove myself away. Then I dig for power and fling myself through time as Jeralt dies again.

#

The fourteenth time Jeralt dies, I do not even attempt to save him. I collapse the moment time rights itself, coughing blood onto the grass. For a moment, I am closer to death than my father, though ultimately, he beats me to the abyss.

#

It becomes harder to remember what's real, what's me. It becomes harder to distinguish between my dying body and my father's. We bleed over and over. We die a dozen times, two dozen. The world dies with us, or so it seems.

Sometimes Thales watches. Sometimes he merely waits. Sometimes he speaks, though it's becoming more difficult to make out the words. There's blood in my ears, blood in my mouth, blood slipping from the corners of my eyes and rolling down my cheeks. My body is trying to escape itself before I can throw it through the portal again, shredding it against the ragged teeth of fate until it is nothing but a tattered rag. 

The twenty-sixth time Jeralt dies, she comes. I see her before the world returns. There is a space between, a space that is not a space, a space that is not anything at all. And it is here that Rhea stops my race toward oblivion. 

She holds me. Her hands are cold against my face. When she kisses my cheeks, her lips come away rouged. 

“You must stop,” she says and I feel her voice like cool water soothing my broken body. 

“I can't,” I say. “He's my father.” 

“Even so.”

I realize I cannot move. Though her hands are light, she commands this not-place, holds it still, keeps me here. It is as inevitable as chains. 

“Please,” I say. “Please, let me go. Let me save him.”

“You can not save him.”

It is only in this not-place that I can hear the thousand, million echoes of her voice. _You can not. You must not. You will never. It is fate. It is destiny. It is the will of forces far larger than you._

Still, I say, ragged as cinders, “No.” 

“This is what must be, what has always been.”

Somehow, I have the energy to be angry, to hate her with all that is left of this crumbling body. “No.”

“Jeralt will die,” Rhea says. “He must die.”

Because I am chained down, because I have no choice, I say, “Why?”

“So you might find your way back to me.” 

She releases me. The world arrives for the twenty-sixth time. I am on my hands and knees, my vision going dark, my body shuddering with weakness. 

I hear, rather than see, when my father dies again.

**Author's Note:**

> I'm on [Twitter](https://twitter.com/purplebookcover) (18+ please).
> 
> I respond to every comment. Thank you, friends!


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